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Olympics: Brock University wrestler faces uncertain future

Young wrestlers like Brock University’s Liisa Wainman are grappling with uncertainty following the IOC’s decision to dump the sport from the Olympics.

Brock University wrestler Liisa Wainman, top, is the Canadian junior champion in the 55-kilogram weight class. The 19-year-old has dedicated herself to her goal of making it to the 2020 Olympics. (Patrick Moher photo)

That’s a real “game changer,” Wainman said. Others have used far stronger language to describe the IOC’s decision to get rid of an event that is both steeped in Olympic tradition and the very essence of amateur sport.

There is no fame or fortune to be found in wrestling. But there’s always been the possibility of Olympic glory for men and, as of 2004, for women, too. The chance to compete against the best while the world is actually paying attention to their sport is the dream that has sustained Wainman and young wrestlers like her in high schools, universities and gyms around the globe.

Wainman is at Brock, rather than McMaster where her father is a professor, because she wanted to be coached by three-time Olympic medallist Tonya Verbeek. Passing on a school that suited her academically was just one more sacrifice an athlete who trains four times a day almost every day of the week was willing to make.

“I take Sunday, well, half of Sunday off,” Wainman said.

Five years of training, the strict diet, the lack of time for non-wrestling friends — it was all part Wainman’s goal to compete in the Olympics.

Her room in Thorold, Ont., is a shrine to Canada’s wrestling greats. Verbeek is there. So is gold medallist Carol Huynh. She has “everything that was published” about wrestling from the Beijing and London Summer Games up on her walls. And over her bed is a Canadian flag emblazoned with the words: Olympic Champion 2020.

If the IOC’s decision is not reversed at a meeting later this year, Wainman won’t even have a chance to be at those Olympics, let alone win.

She’s already the Canadian junior champion in the 55-kilogram class.

“I’ll push for 2016,” Wainman said. “It’s my dream and I’m not going to give it up that easily.”

But at only 19 years of age, she knows she has little hope of developing quickly enough to out-wrestle Canada’s strong seniors and qualify for the Rio Games.

That’s why she’ll stick to her training and hope that FILA, wrestling’s international governing body, will mount a strong campaign to get the IOC to reverse its decision.

“We are a very hopeful group of people,” she said. “And we’re not going to go down without a fight. We’re wrestlers.”

She’s been told the odds of IOC board members changing their minds aren’t favourable. But “I’ve seen the hype and I can’t imagine that we’re not making a difference,” she said.

Indeed, IOC president Jacques Rogge has already agreed to “have discussions” with the head of FILA about how to keep the sport in the Olympics.

As it stands now, wrestling will compete against seven other sports, including baseball, karate and sport climbing, for a single slot in the 2020 Summer Games.

While the political battle goes on beyond the IOC’s closed doors, Wainman will be on the mat, training. She has to defend her title at nationals in March, after all.

But if the IOC decision isn’t overturned, it isn’t just the Olympic dream that wrestlers like Wainman will lose. Training and competition opportunities will eventually disappear, too.

“We’re probably going to get a huge amount of funding cuts and it’ll be really hard to continue wrestling,” she said.

Canada’s Own the Podium program, which helps elite athletes, is investing $1.3 million in wrestling this year and has committed to continuing funding until the 2016 Rio Games.

But that program is about winning Olympic medals, not Canadian events or even world championships. Future funding will be “revisited” once the IOC has finalized its decision on what sports are in, and out, of the 2020 Games.

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